'Pierre Bec' (in
Occitan '''Pèire Bèc'''), is an Occitan poet and linguist. Born in
Paris,
1921, he spent his childhood in
Comenge, where he learnt
Occitan. He has been deported to
Germany from
1943 al
1945. After coming back, he studied in Paris, where he graduated in
1959. He was one of the founders of the ''Institut d'Estudis Occitans'' (Institute for Occitan studies, IEO), and its president as well from 1961 on.
He is also titular professor at
Poitiers university and assistant director of the ''Centre d'Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale'' (Centre for high studies in medieval civilisation). He is considered one of the most important specialists in Occitan
dialectology and in mediaval Occitan literature. His activity is distributed among Occitanist politics, philological research and literary creation. He collaborated with publications like ''Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale'' , ''Revue de Linguistique Romane'', ''Estudis Romà nics'', ''Oc''.
In
1982 he took part in the Linguistic Normalisation commission for
Aranese, with
Jaume Taupiac and
Miquel Grosclaude: they established some linguistics norms, officialised in
1983, following
IEO's indications for
Gascon.
Works
Literature
★ ''Petite anthologie de la lyrique occitane du Moyen Âge'' (1954)
★ ''Les saluts d'amour du troubadour Arnaud de Mareuil'' (1961)
★ ''La langue occitane'' (1963)
★ ''Manuel pratique de Philologie romane'' (1970-1971)
★ ''Burlesque et obscénité chez les troubadours'' (1984)
★ ''Chants d'amour des femmes troubadours'' (1995)
★ ''Au briu de l'estona'' (1955) poesia
★ ''Sonets barròcs entà Iseut'' (1979) poesia
★ ''Lo hiu tibat'' (1978) novel·la
★ ''Sebastian'' (1980) novel·la
★ ''Raconte d’una mort tranquilla'' (1993) narració
★ ''Contes de l'unic'' (1977) narració
Linguistics
LingüÃstica
★ ''Manuel pratique d'occitan moderne'' (Picard, 1973; 2e édition 1983)
★ ''Manuel pratique de philologie romane'' (Picard, 1970 (vol. 1), 1971 (vol. 2) - reedit. 2000)
★ ''Les Interférences linguistiques entre gascon et languedocien dans les parlers du Comminges et du Couserans'' (PUF, 1968): Essai d'aréologie systématique.
Importance for Gallo-Cisalpine language(s)
As a linguist, Pierre Bec stated, within his ''Manuel pratique de Philologie romane'' (2nd volume, p.316) that some kind of diachronical unity holds between Rhaeto-Romance languages (i.e.
Romansh,
Friulian and
Ladin) and
Northern Italian or Cisalpine ones (
Lombard,
Piedmontese,
Venetan,
Emilano-Romagnol and
Ligurian). This issue has been further investigated by the Australian linguist
Geoffrey Hull.
See also
★
Occitan
★
Aranese
★
Gallo-Italic languages
★
Geoffrey Hull